D.Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task is certain methodological assumptions about what inquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feurerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result exposes confusion, but also gives logical space to religious belief and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the...